Can you have an emotional connection with a doll? Jamie Diamond and Elena Dorfman ask this question in an exhibition at the Fondazione Prada

Is it possible to form an emotional or affective bond with a doll? American photographer Jamie Diamond (Brooklyn, 1983) and her colleague Elena Dorfman (Boston, 1965) asked themselves that question, and the answer à the exhibition Surrogates. An Ideal Love, curated by Melissa Harris, the Fondazione Prada-branded project that, from Feb. 21 to July 22, 2019, is hosted at theObservatory in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan.

Through a selection of 42 photographic works by Diamond and Dorfman, the project explores the concepts of familial, romantic and erotic love. Both artists choose a specific and unusual aspect of this universal theme: the emotional bond between a man or woman and an artificial representation of a human being. As Melissa Harris explains, “Diamond and Dorfman’s works vividly and unprejudicedly document the interactions between humans and their inanimate but realistic companions.”

In the series Forever Mothers (2012-2018) and Nine Months of Reborning (2014), Jamie Diamond documents the lives of an outsider community of self-identified female artists called Reborners, who make and collect hyper-realistic dolls with which they interact to fulfill their desire for motherhood. In another project presented in the exhibition entitled I Promise to be a Good Mother (2007-2012), Diamond impersonates the perfect mother, wearing her mother’s clothes and interacting with Annabelle, a reborn doll. Inspired by a diary the artist kept as a child, the project later evaporated into a complex exploration of social stereotypes and cultural conventions surrounding the relationship between mother and child.

Still Lovers (2001-04) the series of photographs that has given Elena Dorfman international visibility, focuses on people sharing their daily domestic lives with realistic life-size sex dolls. Her photographs delve into the bonds formed between humans and perfectly reproduced synthetic women and force the viewer to reconsider his or her view of love and reflect on the value of an object that can replace a human being. The artist’s intent is not to emphasize the deviance represented by these sexual surrogates, but to reveal their hidden side by portraying the intimacy between flesh and silicone.

Diamond and Dorfman portrayed surrogates as desired and idealized creatures, fetish-objects endowed with a “life of their own” shared with flesh-and-blood mothers or partners, and sometimes with their closest relatives. As Melissa Harris explains, “depicting conventional scenes of domesticity, love and/or eroticism, Dorfman and Diamond’s photographs convey an unexpected pathos.”

For all information you can visit the official website of the Prada Foundation.

Pictured: Elena Dorfman, Galatea 4, from Still Lovers (2002; chromogenic print mounted on aluminum, 75.6 x 75.6 cm). Courtesy the artist

Source: press release

Can you have an emotional connection with a doll? Jamie Diamond and Elena Dorfman ask this question in an exhibition at the Fondazione Prada

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